The Making of Odin’s Oar

Below is the original design sketch, however while the fittings remained true to the original design, the blade became a collaboration between KC Lund (who is well known for his special blend of Pattern Welded Damascus steel in L6 and O1 – which when welded together and through his specialized heat treatment, develops the much desired Bainite steel microstructure) and John, and so the original runic inscriptions gave way to the raw beauty of the Damascus steel.

The original concept sketch by John Lundemo

FORGING THE BLADE – SEPTEMBER 2017

The blade of this sword is made by taking two billets of two of the strongest steels known to man, L6 and O1.

These billets are forge folded several times, then separated into two halves and pattern welded together using traditional Viking forging techniques.

Below you can see the blade still hot from the forge of KC Lund.

The whole forging process is VERY labor intensive, all of it done by hand the old fashioned way with hammer and anvil. And slowly, the bare blade begins to take shape.

As you can see, it has a nicely shaped full tang.

What follows is a ton of shaping, polishing and refining – and slowly but surely – the beautiful asymmetrical pattern of the folded and pattern welded steel begins to reveal itself.

So it goes from this..

To THIS..

And here is a close up of the stunningly beautiful blade that any Berserker or Valkyrie would kill for (indeed, this blade is so tough that if it was somehow possible to take it back to the Vikings in a time machine, they would most definitely think it was REALLY a magical sword..).

NOVEMBER 2017

After the heat treatment process. the blades are handed over to John Lundemo, who further shapes them polishes them and hones them by hand until they perfectly smooth and razor sharp.

The full tang is very thick and sturdy as you can see from the picture above and below.

Finally, the fittings are hand carved from mild steel and a master mold is made, with the actual fittings sent to a local US investment casting company and then returned to John, who hand finishes them and mounts them to the tang.

Below you can see the original hand carved fittings that the investment molds were created from.

DECEMBER 2017

Finally, in late December 2017 the sword is completed – the finishing touches the oxblood leather grip (also available with brown leather) and – well, as they say a picture speaks a thousand words, so here are a couple of thousand words worth..

The first 10 pcs were available from December 17th 2017 and 4 sold within the first 24 hours at $2,750 – simply because, that is actually quite a bargain price (a sword like this one, made in the USA to the highest standards could easily sell for $4,800)..

So once sold out, there will only ever be 10pcs left – and then that’s it..

Here are some pics from the production run of completed swords with the scabbards – with a burn-stained and scorched look as if made from recovered wood (or the burnt remains of the original scabbard)..

And here are some pictures of the accompanying artwork by Warren Louw with the very first concept sketch..

And the second draft which is around 90% complete..

I was almost a little shocked by the second draft as it did look like Runa was going commando, but was assured it was just that the final texturizing had not yet been done to her clothing..